Daffodils
by Hedgi
Summary: For a moment, everything was—right. The ground was solid under her feet, and everything was all right. After 15 months of—of pain, and losing, and heartbreak, everything was finally blooming. And then the moment shattered. Spoilers for 2x01, Caitlin introspection about the Thing during the Singularity.


For a moment, everything was—right. The ground was solid under her feet, and everything was all right. After 15 months of—of pain, and losing, and heartbreak, everything was finally blooming, spring sunshine warm on her face, even inside. The hole inside of her was mended. Ronnie was back, and she was home. He was home. He'd run down to the pipeline to cut the power, like that night before, and she couldn't lose him again, wouldn't, so she ran with him, her heart racing. And they did it.  
The impossible really was just another Tuesday, and nothing this tangled little family couldn't solve.  
The portal that Barry had opened was closed. She wasn't sure what was happening inside the accelerator ring, but the portal was shut down, and that meant everything would be ok. Ronnie gripped her hand, assuring her that he was fine, that he'd had worse than being tossed like a rag doll across a corridor. She believed him.  
The world had not unraveled around them, she still had a polished washer around her finger, smoothed out, until Ronnie could find a real ring.  
There was so much to be done—he was legally dead, they'd need to get documents—her parents would have to be told….Her mom would be so mad, to have missed the wedding, but then, they hadn't exactly had a valid license so they'd probably need to do it over again, anyway. That hardly mattered.  
For a moment, standing in the little corridor, holding his hand, she could still smell the daffodils, the promise that as dark as winter got, spring came. That as cold and hard as things were, the sun always came out. Fifteen months of winter had taught her that. Everything was all right.  
And then the moment shattered.

She wanted to sob with the unfairness of it all, that Barry hadn't saved his mother, after everything, that Eddie had—she had liked Eddie. She hadn't known him well, but she had liked him. And like Ronnie all those months back, he had saved so many lives, countless lives, and no one would ever know for true. That wasn't fair. That wasn't right. She was a scientist, a rational person, Caitlin knew that Fair shouldn't even be in her vocabulary, but it hurt.  
Because everything had seemed so bright and now it was wrong.

The hole in the sky above the city was like every part of science fiction movies she'd hated to think about, a gaping mouth set to take everything. How long would it take to destroy the world and keep going? She didn't know, just clung to Ronnie's hand. His grip was warm in hers, squeezing so tight that her ring bit into her finger, but she didn't care.  
If Barry couldn't stop it, this would be the end. She couldn't face that alone.  
But she wasn't alone, and it wasn't the end.  
She almost wished it had been.  
The wind ripped trucks and trees from the ground, the smell of burning mingled with something too sweet—flowers from a nearby cart, rushing up and away. Even as Ronnie's hand slipped away, flames in his eyes, she could feel the handful of daffodils in its place. No she wanted to scream it.Not again I've lost you too many times before don't do this.  
But even as she tried, tears in her eyes, offering one plea even though she knew. She knew him. If he thought he could help—if he thought he had to help—if he thought there was nothing else to be done—what could she say?  
She wanted to say, Come back to me. She wanted to say, I love you. She wanted to say, it's too soon.  
But in the keening depths of her heart, like a singularity itself folding inward into a hole, she knew his words before he spoke them. He'd said them before. Cait I have to do this, Caitlin whatever happens I—

So she watched, hoping. There had been so many miracles, so many impossibilities, surely there could be another. They could do this, they could do this because they had to. They'd save the city, and come home, and-  
Fire brighter than the sun blinded her but she dared not close her eyes, just kept them locked on the vortex and the lightning and the flame until her vision danced white and gold and black and she could see—she could see anything but she had to keep looking.

So many voices had been screaming, the world had been deafened by them, but now, suddenly, everything was quiet but for one long, continuous cry of "No."  
She didn't realize until she had to pause for breath that it was her own voice, that she had fallen to the ground, her palms and knees bleeding where they'd found shards of glass and chipped rubble. There were hands on her shoulders; she shrugged them off, eyes searching, finding Martin Stein, pale as death and haunted and alone. No, no, no, he could be alone, he had to be—where was Ronnie, they were connected, and she was connected too, so he had to be here. Somewhere. Just out of sight, just out of reach.  
The vain hope, like a single daffodil pushing up too early—an omen of disasters to come- withered away as she searched, wild and desperate. No.  
Ronnie was gone. He was Gone. Like before, but this time—what was there this time, what miracle was there this time? There had been no FIRESTORM Matrix to merge his soul and body with someone else, no miraculous saving grace to pluck him from the sky.  
And all she could think, mixing in with the revulsion of no not again please not again was he saved so many lives, and no one will ever know—She'd said those words a life time ago, but they were just as true now.  
She stared at the spot in the sky that had closed over, blue again, summer on its way, feeling like so much shattered glass.  
Maybe she should have known it couldn't last.  
At her feet, amid the bits of windows and steel and pavement, there was a flash of yellow. For a heartbeat she thought it was just another trick of the light, of the flames she could still see in her mind's eye, the memory replaying as if she could change it by straining hard enough.  
It wasn't a flicker falter brightness, though.  
Slowly, numb-fingered, she reached down, and touched it, feeling silk under her fingertips.  
Now crushed and trampled, it was a single yellow daffodil.

* * *

I'm sorry (no I'm not)


End file.
